(1935-) US writer. He used his experience of working in a mental hospital as the basis for his best-selling first novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest 1962 (filmed 1975). This was followed by his Oregon-set novel Sometimes a Great Notion 1964. In the mid-1960s he gave up writing and became one of the leaders of the hippie movement.
He returned to writing with Kesey’s Garage Sale 1973 and Demon Box 1988, collections of less energetic, sometimes folksy material. Kesey’s life as a hippie was described by Tom Wolfe in his Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.